Raised by Natalie Brennan, a flamboyant and irresponsible mother, Ziggy Brennan gets involved in hustling men at a young age. She hangs around with a wild crowd and learns gets her "street smarts" first from her mother, who wants everyone to think they are sisters, and then from Denny Reagan, an older man. He starts teaching her his tricks of the trade and she falls right in line with his crooked ways. Then one night she meets Martin J. 'Mart' Neilson, a tall, handsome, honest farmer boy who's a sailor and they fall in love. While he's away fighting the war, she discovers she's pregnant.

Dr. Kildare treats and falls for impoverished ex-con Janet Haley, widow of a bank robber, who can't find her baby. Later she helps Kildare sew up gangster Hanlon in a tavern back room. Kildare pursues Janet and enlists Hanlon to help her; the gangster's solution, not surprisingly, is violent.

Teddy Shaw, a bored New York office girl, goes to a camp in the Catskill Mountains for rest and finds Chick Kirkland.

After a night on the town, Jonathan Blair wakes to find that Texan Valentine Ransome has escorted him home. Valentine is attracted to Jonathan and sets out first to reform him, and his family's near-bankrupt shipping company, and then to marry him. In her way is Jonathan's fiancée, actress Carol Wallace.